Education Commons^™

Fostering A Sense Of Online Community: Faculty Reflections Through Narratives, Brittany D. Anthony

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This qualitative study will explore how MSW faculty describe a community in online courses and what strategies they use in fostering a sense of community within courses from an online Master of Social Work program at the University of South Florida. There is an imperative need to ensure online courses provide a sense of community to support students for success. During the timespan of an online course, strategic pedagogical approaches to fostering a community are essential to enriching the overall learning experience for students. Many studies tend to focus on the challenges faced when building an online community. Still, the …

Teaching For Knowledge Transfer: Best Practices From A Graduate-Level Educational Psychology Distance Learning Program, Bobby Hoffman

University of South Florida (USF) M3 Publishing

One measure of effective instruction is the ability to solve authentic real-world problems by effectively transferring and applying classroom and textbook knowledge. While many students can productively earn high grades and learn course content, they are not always able to apply the knowledge they gain. As such, this quasi-experimental study compared the comprehensive exit exam results of learners across instructional modalities who completed a prominent graduate-level educational psychology program. ANCOVA revealed superior knowledge transfer for blended-learning students compared to those who completed distance education and significantly greater transfer of declarative, procedural, and self-regulatory knowledge by the blended-learning students. This paper …

Overarching Themes Of Moocs: An Integrative Literature Review, Gregory Bunn, Doris Lee

University of South Florida (USF) M3 Publishing

Massive open online courses (MOOCs) represent a growing means of offering mass instruction to students separated across distances and countries. MOOCs provide a flexible platform for instruction across numerous disciplines via the Internet. By incorporating a variety of online environments and discussion formats, MOOCs enable learners to engage with content and instructions in new ways. As MOOCs continue to evolve in design and involve more students, it becomes important to determine overarching themes in the literature discussing MOOCs. Such an investigation offers the potential to reveal new connections and ideas pertinent to the successful design and running of online courses. …

Adult College Students' Perceptions About Learning Mathematics Via Developmental Mathematical Xmoocs, Pelagia Alesafis Kilgore

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Debates over the promising change Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) might offer to traditional online learning now produce significant attention and discourse among the media and higher education. Ample articles discuss the potential benefits of MOOCs from the perspectives of faculty and administration. However, little is known about students’ perceptions of MOOCs. Given the lack of relevant literature and the reality that MOOCs are created to benefit students, it is important to elicit current college students’ perceptions of MOOCs since it is well documented learning mathematics online has its problems (Ashby, Sadera, & McNary, 2011; Frame, 2012; Ho et al., …

Learner-Directed Vs. Instructor-Provided Curriculum Among Undergraduate Students, Christopher D. Martinez

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

There has been little or no research on the use of a Learning Object in the field of religious studies. The purpose of this research study was to assess undergraduate student knowledge gain outcomes between instructor-provided and learner-directed methods, which is the independent variable, using asynchronous, online, narrated PowerPoint presentations compared to undergraduate student knowledge gain using an online learning-objects unit, in a college-level world religions survey course at St. Petersburg College. This study assessed undergraduate student knowledge gain outcomes between instructor-provided and learner-directed methods among 90 college undergraduate students and determined whether there was a significant difference in the …

An Investigation Of The Relationship Between Face-To-Face Orientations, Instructor Verbal Immediacy Behaviors, And Persistence In Online Courses, Donald Painter, Jr.

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The persistence rate in online classes remains significantly lower than in comparable face-to-face classes. There is a lack of research on strategies to help learners persist in online classes. The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship between face-to-face orientations, instructor verbal immediacy behaviors, and persistence in online classes. It also explored the relationship between verbal immediacy and student satisfaction. Due to the disagreement in the literature, this study also investigated the relationship between student demographic variables, grade point average, and persistence.

This quantitative study combined both causal-comparative and correlational research methods. The study took place at a …

Interactive Aphra: Skyping Behn Into Your Classroom, Cheryl Wanko

ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640-1830

Beginning by asking how teachers manage the presence of the author in their literature classrooms, this article describes the classroom experiment of interviewing Karen Eterovich, an actor who portrays Aphra Behn, using Skype. It describes the planning and scripting processes, explains the particular interests of this group of students, and assesses the final activity. Questions arose about topics for the interview, appropriate ways for Behn to respond, and the need for a script. The pedagogical opportunities for preparing students as interviewers and of expanding their understanding of performance, historical reenactment, and the construct of the author are discussed. Possible extensions …

Designing Successful Online Courses - Part 2, Kathleen P. King

Leadership, Counseling, Adult, Career and Higher Education Faculty Publications

Once again, our major goal is to provide faculty with consistent guidance through the many instructional decisions and design steps they need to pursue in this process. This process is a fantastic opportunity to craft a virtual learning space in which people can engaging in learning beyond the constraints of time and space.

Harnessing Innovative Technologies In Higher Education: Access, Equity, Policy & Instruction, Kathleen P. King, Joan K. Griggs

Leadership, Counseling, Adult, Career and Higher Education Faculty Publications

This publication is an attempt to capture the evolution of distributed higher education over the last decade by tracing the applications of new technologies funded by the Fund for the Improvement of Postsecondary Education (FIPSE). As FIPSE surveyed the current state of distance/distributed education, there existed an opportunity to help post econdary education make the transition to this new generation of distance education made possible by the explosive growth of the Internet and other new technologies. These technologies created the potential for students to access learning that was interactive, customized, and self-paced; to more easily merge lifelong learning with the …